However, we might do well, first of all, to consider the general question: what is salvation? This question is by no means superfluous. For, on the one hand, on our answer to this question must needs depend our conception of the part grace has in our salvation; and, on the other hand, especially in modern times the truth concerning salvation is distorted and corrupted in more than one way.
Salvation is not the same as reformation, the improvement of man and of the world; it has nothing in common with the modern notion of the building of character. This modernistic conception recognizes, indeed, that man is not what he ought to be. There is something wrong with him and with the world he is making. Especially in our own times, now the whole imposing structure of human culture and civilization threatens to collapse, this is deeply felt. However, it is maintained that man is not inherently corrupt. He is fundamentally good. Bur he is in need of reform. We must apply ourselves to man’s reformation, to the building of his character, as well as to the improvement of his environment. And in this noble effort we must take Jesus as our example and turn to His teachings, especially to the Sermon on the Mount, for our program of reformation. If man only learns to follow in His steps and to apply His teachings to all his life and relationships, he will be saved. He will then learn to acknowledge that, like Jesus, so he, too, is the son of God; that God is the loving Father of all, and all men are brethren. And thus he will become a good, peace-loving creature, capable of making of the present world a kingdom of God in which righteousness shall dwell. Needless to say, in such a view of salvation there is no room for grace. Salvation is the work of proud man, not of God. And it is quite superfluous to prove that this human philosophy has nothing in common with the Biblical gospel of salvation.
However, it is not only in modernistic circles that one meets with a perverted presentation of the truth of salvation. On the contrary, also they who ostensibly preach the gospel of Christ, but in the meantime present the matter of salvation as something that ultimately depends for its realization on the will of man, distort the doctrine of sovereign grace. Salvation, according to this view, is something like a present that is all prepared and that is freely and graciously offered, but which one may either refuse or accept. Or it is like a kind invitation to some party or banquet, with which one may either comply or politely decline. So the sinner is offered salvation, chiefly consisting in escape from hell and entrance into heaven after this life, on condition that he will accept Christ. This salvation is all prepared for the sinner. In himself he is damned, worthy of eternal death. But Christ died for every sinner, and merited for all the forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and eternal glory.
So far it is all of grace.
And that the gospel is preached to sinners and this glorious redemption is offered them freely, that, too, is of grace.
But it is at this point that salvation as a work of divine grace and power ends. For beyond the merited redemption of Christ and the offered salvation, grace is not sovereign and efficacious: it is powerless to save and actually to deliver from the dominion of sin and death, except by the sinner’s consent. If the sinner only accepts the salvation that is offered to him, if only he will say, “I accept Christ as my personal Savior,” all will be well with him, and grace can proceed; but if he is recalcitrant and stubbornly declines the earnest invitation to be saved, grace can do nothing with him. Many a preacher does not hesitate openly and boldly to declare that God is powerless to save the sinner unless the latter gives his consent, and that Christ can do no more than He did unless the sinner permits Him to proceed with His work of salvation. Jesus is willing to save, but His willingness must suffer shipwreck on the rock of man’s contrary and refractory will. He stands at the door of the sinner’s heart and knocks; but the key of the door is on the inside, and the Savior cannot enter, unless the sinner opens the door.
From this arises that very common form of preaching that is erroneously called evangelical and that always reaches its climax in the well-known, extremely sensational “altar call” I say erroneously, for “evangelical preaching” is preaching of the gospel; and the true gospel never presents a powerless God or a Christ impotent to save. Since the grace of God is dependent on the choice of the sinner’s will, it follows that the persuasion of human language, of the voice of the preacher, pleading and begging, may assist him to make the right choice and induce him to let Jesus into his heart!
Thus Christ is travestied!
0, to be sure, salvation is deliverance from hell and damnation. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36). But, first of all, salvation is much more than the mere escape from punishment and hell and a check on the bank of heaven that is to be cashed after death. It is a wonderwork of the Almighty, Who quickeneth the dead and calleth the things that are not as if they were. (Romans 4: 17) It is a work in which God becomes revealed unto us in “the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places.” (Ephesians 1: 19, 20) It is a work no less divine, and even more glorious, than the work of creation. All that is required to make of the sinner, dead in sin, filled with enmity against God, cursing the Almighty and raising his rebellious fist in the face of the Lord of heaven and earth, walking in darkness and hating the light – to make of such a sinner a righteous and holy child of God, humbly asking what God wills that he shall do, filled with the love of God, and for ever singing His praises, and to place ,that sinner, thus redeemed and delivered, in living fellowship with the glorious company of all the redeemed and glorified sinners, so that they together constitute a church, a beautiful house of God, a holy temple in the Lord, to the praise of the glory of His grace in the beloved – all this belongs to the work, the mighty work of God that is called salvation!
Secondly, salvation by grace means that it is an exclusively divine work, absolutely free and sovereign, in which man has no part at all and which does not in any sense depend upon the choice of man’s will. Even as the work of creation is of God alone, which He accomplished without the cooperation of the creature, so the work of salvation is exclusively God’s work, in which man has no part whatever. Even as Adam lived and was an active creature, not in or before his being created, but by virtue of this marvelous work of God, so the sinner lives, and becomes positively active, so that he wills to be saved and embraces Christ, not in cooperation with God Who saves him but as a result of the wonder of grace performed upon him. Salvation by grace implies that grace is always first. True, “whosoever will may come,” but the will to come is not prevenient to grace but subsequent to it as its fruit.
Taken from a new summer read I recently bought at Baker Book House. In I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life, lifetime reader Anne Bogel reflects on the paradoxes of readers and bibliophiles like herself. The chapters are short and packed with great insights and encouragements about the literary life – the highs and lows, the tears and triumphs of reading.
It has been a few months since we posted from the book on listening carefully to the preaching of God’s Word. Let’s return to Expository Listening tonight by looking at some thoughts from the next chapter.
Taken from the new translation by James A. De Jong of Abraham Kuyper’s 
The July 2019 issue of Tabletalk has been out a week or so and I have begun digging into its content. The daily devotions continue the life of David from 2 Samuel, while the theme this month is “Faithfulness in the Little Things,” a striking and significant subject.
The Three R's Blog 